Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Book Awards

Shortlisted for WH Smith Book Awards (New Talent) 2002.

Book Description

There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of 'Jane Eyre'. In this world there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, a great interest in all things literary - and a woman called Thursday Next. In this utterly original and wonderfully funny first novel, Fforde has created a fiesty, loveable heroine and a plot of such richness and ingenuity that it will take your breath away.

Magic has been in a sad state in the Ununited Kingdom for years, but now it's finally on the rise. Jennifer Strange and the sorcerers from Kazam Mystical Arts Management must thwart a dastardly plot by the conniving King Snodd IV and his cronies before it's put into action.

In his witty first novel for young readers, "New York Times"-bestselling author Fforde introduces 15-year-old Jennifer Strange, who runs an agency for underemployed magicians in a world where magic is fading away. But when visions of the death of the world's last dragon begin, all signs point to JenniferNand Big Magic.

Reviews

US Kirkus Review » An unusually sure-footed first novel, this literary folly serves up a generally unique stew of fantasy, science fiction, procedural, and cozy literary mystery-but in the end is more dancing bear than ballet. In an alternative Britain where literature is as important to the masses as movie stars are in our own, kids trade bubble-gum cards of Fielding characters, Baconians go door to door like Jehovah's Witnesses preaching Francis Bacon's authorship of Shakespeare (while radical "New Marlovians" firebomb their meetings), and Richard III is weekly participatory theater, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thursday Next, a veteran of the Crimean War (still being fought after a hundred years), is a LiteraTec, assigned to crimes such as stolen manuscripts and, because time travel is common, very convincing forgeries. Her father, a renegade ChronoGuard, travels time fighting historical revisionists, occasionally visiting Thursday to check his progress ("Have you ever heard of someone named Winston Churchill?"). Acheron Hades, whose supernatural powers make him the third most dangerous man in the world, steals the Prose Portal, an invention allowing travel between literature and reality, and the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit, then ransoms one of the minor characters. Things get worse when he gets his hands on Jane Eyre. Thursday pursues Acheron into the text of the novel (always a puzzlement to Bronte fans because of its oddly truncated close, in which Jane never returns to Rochester), defeats him, and gives the story its familiar happy ending. Back in her own world, Thursday marries her true love in scenes that parallel the novel she's just escaped, aided by characters she'd thought she'd left there. While endlessly inventive, the invention here displays more whim than whimsy (names like Jack Schitt, Millon de Floss, and Oswald Mandias get a grin, but no more), and the world this young Welsh newcomer creates lacks the integrity that makes the best fantasies both startling and enduring. Still, it's a welcoming and amusing place to pass a few hours. (Kirkus Reviews)

The Eyre Affair is the first novel by Jasper Fforde, and the first in the Thursday Next series. Thursday Next is a SpecOps 27 operative, a LiteraTec, who deals in crimes against literature. The novel is set in 1985, when England has been at war with Russia over Crimea for some 130 years, time travel is not uncommon and Wales has seceded from UK and is a Republic. Fforde includes delightfully ridiculous names and the inventions of Thursday's uncle, Mycroft Next are quite wonderful. I am glad I made the effort to read Jane Eyre before reading this. Reading this novel was unadulterated pleasure and I look forward starting on the next in the series, Lost in a Good Book.

Author Biography - Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde's first novel was publishing to astonishing critical and commercial success in 2001. Since then he has written 3 other Thursday next novels, and is working on the first in a new series of crime novels. Jasper lives near Hay-on-Wye and flies Tiger Moth aeroplanes as relaxation.

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